N A G OYA U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R Y W O R K S H O P S 2 0 1 6

Academic Writing
andLogical Thinking
May 18 ~ June 15, 2016

Instructor: Dr. Paul Lai

N A G OYA U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R Y W O R K S H O P S 2 0 1 6Review

Writing is a process ofcommunicating thoughts
through the arrangement of texts

All academic writers are required to know

The Writing Requirement
How words can be properly arranged
to express the ideas.

The Thinking Requirement
How ideas can be properly arranged
so that they can be properly expressed
through words in a clear & convincing
manner.

Being Clear
Having a
Truth Condition

One Sentence

ThesisStatement
Non-Compound
Sentence Structure

Minimum Lexical &Structural Ambiguity

5

Thesis Statement

Support 1

Support 2

Support 3

Logical Relation
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Inferential Relation
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INFERENTIAL
R E L AT I O NStatement 1

Truee.g. Peter is in Tokyo.

Statement 2e.g. Peter is in Japan.

True

INFERENTIAL
R E L AT I O NStatement 2False

e.g. Peter is in Japan.

Statement 1e.g. Peter is in Tokyo.

False

The truth/falsity of statement 1
affects
the truth/falsity of statement 2
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Fun Exercise!!
Solving Logical Puzzles

Puzzle 1:
Who is doing what?

Alonzo, Kurt, Rudolf, and Willard are four creative artists ofgreat talent. One is a dancer, one is a painter, one is a singer,and one is a writer, though not necessarily in that order.
(1) Alonzo and Rudolf were in the audience the night thesinger made his debut on the concert stage.
(2) Both Kurt and the writer have had their portraits
painted from life by the painter.
(3) The writer, whose biography of Willard was a best-seller,
is planning to write a biography of Alonzo.
(4) Alonzo has never heard of Rudolf.
What is each man’s artistic field?

(Homework)(i) Think about a paperthat you are planningto write.
(ii) Develop a thesis
statement for thepaper.
(iii) Presenting yourthesis statement onJune 15.

How to build apreliminary
thesis statement:
Practical Steps

Step 1
Find a noun or noun phrase that can best
describe the main topic of your research paper.
For example,human mindStep 2
Build a Sentence based on the noun ornoun phrase by adding a verb or predicate.
For example,
Human mind is like a computer.

Step 3
Turn the sentence into a Question thatis of interest to you.
For example,
Why is human mind like a computer?

Step 4Give a Hypothetical Answer to the question.
For example,
Human mind is like a computer in many ways. But
basically, they are the same in how they process
symbol-like representations such as “2”, “=“, etc.
Both of them are sensitive only to the syntactic
properties, but not the semantic properties, ofthe symbols.

Step 5
Summarize the answer into just One Sentence.

For example,
Human mind is like a computer in the way they
process symbol-like representations.

Step 6
Modify the sentence until it expresses a clear
relation between the sentence’s Subject andPredicate.
For example,
Human mind and computer are basically the samein the way they process symbol-likerepresentations.

Step 7Highlight and eliminate the Ambiguities found in thesentence.
For example,
Human mind and computer are basically the samein the way they process symbol-likerepresentations.

Human thinking and computational operations
work in basically the same way when they
process linguistic symbols.

A Preliminary Thesis Statement is formed!!

Group Work
Build apreliminary thesis statement

based on the following keyword

Education

Thank you very much!